


Confidences to a Stranger

by TazWren



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Car Accidents, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Inspired by Music, Modern Era, Prose Poem, Reylo - Freeform, Song: To A Stranger, Strangers, Strangers to Lovers, Subways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 03:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20269447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TazWren/pseuds/TazWren
Summary: Ben's subway commute would be dismal monotony if not for her: the girl who smiles at him. Without cause. Without restraint.Smiles at him, a stranger.But when you share a route—share glances across the car—are you really strangers?





	Confidences to a Stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenOfCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/gifts).

> The prompt asked for a story to be written based on ["To A Stranger"](http://www.metrolyrics.com/to-a-stranger-lyrics-the-golden-palominos.html#ixzz5wTydZSI7) by The Golden Palominos.

The day is so full of noise he can barely hear himself think.  
His head is so full of thudding thoughts he can barely hear the noises around him.  
It isn’t normal to think so much, maybe. He isn’t normal, maybe, he thinks.  
But he can fake it, till it looks like he’s as normal as the next person. Still, his thoughts circle, like wheeling kites, waiting for a moment of weakness. Waiting to rip into his psyche.

As he leans against the corner of the subway car, he wears the mask of a stone face. No one can breach it, no one knows.

He is nothing.  
He comes from nothing.  
He has no part in all this life around him.  
No one has ever wanted him—not even the parents who sent him away, never cared to ask after him.

As he sways with the movement of the car, he stares out over the heads of all the people clustered like cattle.

Everyone of them leading their drab, grey lives, going to and fro, back and forth. Presumably to some end.  
Perhaps even some light and love. He wouldn’t know. Maybe that was normal?

Still, they all hang blank-faced, in the same car as he, sharing his darkness for the moments counted by the clacking of the rails  
the incessant speeding in and out of dark tunnels.

Maybe they are all as dark as he.

But, not her.

He straightens, eyes caught by her entry, a whirlwind of energy even this late in the night. He doesn’t know her, has never seen her.  
But he knows, he just knows that she’s been like that all day long.  
Enthusiastic, unflagging and quick to smile.

He wants to sneer at the bright-eyed optimism that shines from her as she threads her way through the car, looking for that one spot where she can plant her feet.

He wants to tell her it’s all a lie, the centre cannot hold, nothing lasts.

Then she smiles at him.  
And falters when he stares at her in shock. She looks away when his mask drops back in place.

No one smiles at him.  
Not ever.  
Not by choice.  
And never so randomly.

Random.

That’s what this feels like, the random careening of a pool ball, propelled by the course of the cue across the baize.

He straightens as the train slows.  
It’s not even his stop, but he feels like he needs to get out.  
So he can breathe again.

…

Another night, another ride in the belly of the beast.  
While outside, the elements rage—it’s a dark and stormy night.  
Banal urbanity can hide people from Nature for only so long before it comes calling.  
Still, down here, as the subway car speeds through the tunnels under the city, it’s still brightly lit, dry and warm.  
And people crowd like moths to the light.

He sees her again; it seems like these days he sees her everywhere.  
She squeezes her way through the press of people, more so tonight than any other, as everyone shelters, afraid of a few measly drops of rain.

Not him, though. He isn’t afraid of the dark or the wet.

He would forego transportation, himself, on a night like this. If he didn’t have to think of the drawings he carried.  
The charcoal patterning the sheets of art card, following in the wake of his mind.  
If he didn’t have to carry them, he’d be out there, walking in the face of the rain.  
Feeling it beat down on him, maybe washing some of his darkness away.

Her edges are still bright and shiny, even if water-drenched.  
Droplets caught on her lashes and dripping from strands of her hair.  
The baggy, wet clothes plastered to her have to be feeling miserable.  
Still, she smiles as she eases her way through the throng, clutching a plastic-covered bundle to her chest.

As the car sways she makes her way closer to him, but doesn’t look at him.  
No smiles for him, not after the last time.  
It’s not any more than he’s used to.  
Still, it shouldn’t feel like something was taken from him.

Look at me, he thinks, against his own judgement.  
See me.  
Please.

As the subway car jerks, her eyes fly up, finding his unerringly. He looks back at her, his face blank, but his mind buzzing like a kicked-over hive.  
This time, he is the one to break, and drop his eyes, not able to bear the clarity in hers.

What is she doing, looking at him? She knows where she’s going, she has her life figured out. What is she doing, looking at a mess like him?

The bundle in her arms, books under the wrapping of plastic that mock him.  
He can barely make out their titles, held close as they are and protected by her body: ‘The Politics of Memory’, ‘Telex From Cuba’, ‘The Theatre of War’.  
Not what he expects from someone who looks as untouched as she is. Though, why he thinks that, he doesn’t know.

There’s a part of him that thrills—she’s not a mindless automan.  
She’s not for you, he tells himself.

…

The next time he sees her, she tumbles into the car, bright laughter cutting through his melancholy.

He watches as the man she’s with wraps his arm around her waist, steadying her.  
When she turns the blinding light of her smile on him, a hand resting on the man’s chest, its like he can feel it against his own.  
Only, with the force of a thousand stones.  
You’re being melodramatic, you dumb shit, he tells himself.  
Still, he rubs at his chest as he looks away, the pain of a phantom blow feeling very real right then.

He doesn’t look at them, he can’t.

Still, he doesn’t miss it when she giggles in response to something being whispered in her ear.  
How can he hear that little jingle of sound through the thundering in his ears?  
He doesn’t miss it when she reaches up to press a kiss against a mouth that isn’t his.

Why should he care? He doesn’t know.  
How is this his business? He doesn’t know.  
Only, somehow, it is.

Suddenly, he’s angry. He was fine in the dark and in the cold. He was just fine on his own.  
Only, now it’s not enough. He doesn’t want to be on his own.  
He doesn’t want-

He lurches from his perch and makes for the door.  
He has no business in the light.

It’s not until he’s gone a few blocks he realizes he’s left his case of drawings on the subway.  
In more ways than one, his hands are empty.

…

“Is this yours?”  
Her voice at his back startles him.  
Whipping around he stares at her, and then at what she’s holding out. His case.  
Bewildered he looks around them, the subway car more than half empty, the hour gone past midnight.

Why does she have his case?

Again, her voice prompts him: “This is yours, isn’t it?”  
“Yes, yes it is.” He sounds rusty, like he isn’t used to speech.  
Automatically, he reaches out to take the case from her, holding it close as his fingers ghost over where hers had rested.  
He thinks he can still feel their warmth.  
Much like the warmth that blooms across her face as he still stares at her, wide-eyed and pole-axed.  
“You’d forgotten it on the train last night—I thought I’d give it to you when I saw you next.”

Still, he stays silent as his thoughts whirl.  
She’d seen him leave. She knew the case was his.  
She hadn’t turned it into lost and found, instead waiting to give it to him.  
He doesn’t know what it means.  
Does it mean anything?

“Right.” Her voice is flat, as is her expression as she steps back and away from him.  
What did he do? Why does she look disappointed? It’s not like he-  
Oh.  
Right.

He clears his throat and calls after her, “Thank you.”  
She stops and turns back to nod at him. And then, she smiles.  
A small one, but still a smile.  
For him.

He clutches the case against him, to anchor him as his mind ventures into the unknown.

Then, the doors open and she’s smiling at someone else.  
The man from the night before, who swoops her into a hug before nuzzling her neck.  
Oh.  
Right.

…

It's harder and harder to avoid seeing her, now.  
Always smiling, always with the man who isn't him.  
She throws him a bone or two, a smile his way if their eyes meet—a quiet nod of acknowledgement.  
They're riding the rails together, after all, day after day.

Still, they’re strangers—people who know nothing about each other.  
Except, he does he thinks. Know her.

She is sunshine and exhilaration and happiness. She is optimism and idealism and romanticism.  
Yet, there’s something in her, he senses. Sometimes a shadow when she thinks no one can see. An urgency, a desperation. An edge that does not belong.  
Something that presses on her and dulls the light in her eyes before it snaps and she’s smiling again.  
Something that makes her lip tremble before she firms it.  
Something that worms its way through the heart of her light, casting a shadow where it does not belong.

If he hadn’t been watching her, he wouldn’t know.  
If he hadn’t drawn her face, her eyes—over and over till her brightness begins to replace the darkness his hand is used to rendering--he wouldn’t know.

She asks him a question one night, as they sway in almost syncopated rhythm, in isolated splendor—the only two people in the car on that rare occasion. Maybe that’s why she speaks to him, because there’s no one else around them.

“Your art,” she points to his portfolio case, “I saw it that other night. I hope you don’t mind that I opened the case.”  
Mutely, he shakes his head, wondering what’s happening.  
“They’re beautiful, your drawings. But, do you really see everything as that hopeless and cold?”  
Does he?  
He isn’t sure anymore. Still, he knows the pieces she’s seen, what he saw when he made them.  
He tries to explain: “Not everyone has someone. Everyone and everything dies, without purpose. So, yes.”  
“Isn’t purpose something you need to find for yourself?” she counters.  
“What is your purpose?” he asks, willing to be shown.  
A moment of silence while she weighs his question. “To live happy? To be well-loved, maybe?”  
“Are you happy, then?” he challenges, knowing she isn’t.  
Again, silence.  
“Are you?” she asks quietly, not meeting his eyes.  
His laugh is brittle. “I’m not sure I know what that means.”  
“That’s like living in the dark!”  
This time, he is the one to fall silent.  
Then-

“Maybe I’m waiting for the light to find me.” He doesn’t look at her again, the rest of the ride silent as they hang opposite each other, swaying in tandem, but not together.

…

The shadows are overtaking her; he sees them pulling at her edges, fraying them.  
Trouble in paradise?

He doesn’t want the throb of anticipation he feels at the thought.  
He doesn’t want her to be anything but happy. Well-loved, maybe.  
And he doesn’t want the shadows chasing her, either.

He watches, and watches, as she grows more wan.  
Still, the other man is with her.

There’s a sharpness between them now, but they’re still together. She clings to his arm, but she’s no longer at the center of his attention.  
The spring keeps tightening, the tension between them growing. It’s visible to anyone, now.  
It shames her, he sees.  
The look in her eyes chills him.  
The snap is coming, the tension due to break.

He doesn’t want to know what that will mean.  
He doesn’t want to know what might happen.

The next time she gets on the train, he barely recognizes her. The defeat, despair and despondency now marking her face, alien to his senses.  
Foreign feelings that stab him in the chest as he sees his darkness now in her.  
For the first time in forever, she’s sitting slumped in a corner, broken.

No. No!  
Panic flutters at him. He can’t see her this way.  
She needs to smile. She needs to shine.  
She needs to be whole, even if it isn’t him who makes it so.  
He stands in front of her, waits for her to look up, to look at him. To see him.  
She doesn’t.  
She stares at nothing, her eyes red-rimmed.

He waits.  
Nothing happens.

It can’t go on this way, she can’t go on this way. It’s not right, it’s not her.  
It’s not right for her.  
He squats and looks up at her.  
Finally, she meets his eyes.  
“Are you okay?”  
The question is soft, the answer is not.  
Tears leak from her eyes, loud sobs from her throat.

No. No!  
She needs to stop, she needs to not cry.  
He needs to make this okay.  
Quickly, he takes her hand and pulls her up with him.  
Then, they’re walking. Out the subway car, out from underground, out onto the street.  
Out into the open.

…

Her hand in his, his wrapped around hers. He leads, she follows.  
Her hands wrap around the coffee mug, warm against the chill. She huddles, hunched around herself as she sips the hot drink.  
He sits back, waiting, watching, sipping from his own mug.  
She’s stopped crying, the tears slowing before stopping. The tracks they made down her face though, those are still there.

He waits.  
Nothing happens.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, still afraid she may cry again but needs to break through to her.  
She stares at nothing.  
“Is there anything I can do to help?” He’s desperate now, not able to stand the shadow she’s under.  
Slowly she raises her head and stares at him. It’s like she’s seeing him for the very first time.

“Will you kiss me?”  
The question is soft, the noise in his head is not.  
Yes!  
No!  
“What?”

“Kiss me.” She’s the desperate one, now, leaning forward and gripping his arm. “Please.”  
His heart is breaking within him—he doesn’t want her to go this way.  
“Why?” he asks, gently.  
More tears, quietly this time.  
“What's wrong with me? Why wasn’t I enough?” Her grip is tightening; his fingers flex.  
He can’t think, he doesn’t know what to say. She isn’t done speaking.  
“I did everything I could, whatever he wanted. Whenever he wanted, however he wanted.” She’s whispering now, but every word is loud in his ears.

He can’t stop the images that flood him, even though he doesn’t want them.  
Her, under that man’s weight, her legs around his, her breath, her... her... her…  
He can’t take it, but is helpless to stop her.  
“I’ll never be enough for anyone.”  
Her tone is final, she’s resigned to what her heart convinces her is the truth.  
No, lies! His mind screams. You will always be enough, more than!  
His voice doesn’t stir though, muted by the force within him.  
Why would she want to hear it from him?  
_ Kiss me, please.  
_ Or would she?

He’s standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down into the unknown, afraid to leap, afraid to fall.  
He doesn’t know how to fly.  
She makes him want to, though.  
To plummet into the depths of her darkness and dispel it with-  
What? His light?  
He scoffs at himself.  
Still, he can’t bear to see her lower than low. She deserves to feel like a queen. She _ is _ a queen.

Reaching out he takes her hand, his touch soft.  
“He is a fool if he doesn’t see you—he doesn’t deserve you.  
I won’t kiss you today, not like this. I’m not him.  
Ask me another day, ask me and I’ll say yes.”  
He promises.  
Her eyes search his and, slowly, the light rises. She nods, already sitting straighter, coming back from the edge she teeters at.  
“Go home.”  
She nods again, accepting his direction.  
A squeeze of her hands, a quiet “Thank you,” and she’s gone, leaving him to stare at the empty seat opposite.

Did that just happen?  
What just happened?  
A laugh breaks, he can’t believe himself.  
There’s a lightness he doesn’t recognize, but he knows it. It feels right.

Walking out, he’s lost in the memory of her hand in his. Closing his eyes, he can still feel her.  
Then-  
A screech of tires, impact, shock, shouting. Pain.  
There’s a darkness he knows, but doesn’t recognize. It’s all wrong.  
So wrong.  
His eyes close, still searching for her.

…

Everyday she waits for him.  
Her eyes search the cars as she gets on and, not finding him, fall to her feet.  
She’s walked the length of the subway cars, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, he’s there somewhere.  
_ Ask me another day._  
  
The depth of his voice, the warmth of his eyes. She still remembers like it was yesterday. Maybe it was.  
Was it a lie, to soothe a crying stranger?  
She doesn’t think so.  
She knows him, she thinks.  
She knows he won’t say anything he doesn’t mean. That every word he speaks, harsh or not, is the truth to him.  
Where is he, _ where is he_?  
Why did he disappear? Why isn’t he here?

Her thoughts overwhelm her, wheeling like kites, careening like a pool ball across the baize.  
She’s seen him every day she’s ridden the subway—there’s no way to escape his dark gaze, even when he doesn’t realize he’s looking at her.  
She’s always felt like he could see all the way into her.  
That he sees her.  
Even when she's seeing someone else.

How strange, that a man she doesn’t even know can feel like the only one who knows her.

But-  
Where is he? Why isn’t he here?  
Every day, she searches for him. Not willing to accept that he-  
No.  
No.  
He will be back. She knows. She hopes.  
She can wait. She knows all about waiting.

Then, one night, she can’t believe he’s actually there. Slumped in a seat, his head against the window.  
She stops and stares.  
A red, red gash barely healed, slicing down his face.  
She stands in front of him, waits for him to look up, to look at her. To see her.  
He doesn’t.  
His eyes remain closed, sunken and shadow-rimmed, dark smudges surround them.

She waits.  
Nothing happens.

“Are you okay?”  
At the sound of her voice, his eyes snap open, wide and staring. They look at her like they’ve never seen her before, like she’s all they can see.  
No one has ever looked at her that way.

“I thought you-” she looks away, not sure what she wants to say.  
“After you left that night, I didn’t look, I didn’t see. Neither did the driver.”  
A gasp, her hand pressing against her mouth. Images crashing through her head even though she doesn’t want them.  
A car slamming into him, dragging him, his body broken, his… his… his…  
She feels the force of a thousand stones hitting her, as she realizes, _ realizes _ how close he’d come to not being here.  
And what it means to her that he is.  
“I’m okay, I’ll be okay. I’m here.”  
He assures her.  
She nods, before finding her voice. “I thought I might never see you again—I’ve never felt so alone in all my life.”  
“You’re not alone.” His hand is open in front of her.  
“Neither are you.” She takes it and holds on, not believing how solid he feels.  
Warm.  
Alive.  
Here.

A shy smile, and then he offers, “I’m Ben.”  
“Rey,” she breathes in response.  
“Rey.” He tastes the sound of her name, saying it like he’s savoring it.  
“Rey,” His eyes are bright, despite the shadows and bruises that mar his face, “it’s another day. Ask me, and I’ll say yes.”

Her laughter is bright, and then she’s kissing him, pressing close, but being careful not to hurt him.  
They twine around each other, slowly, inexorably, incapable of escaping their pull any longer.  
He tastes like coffee and rain.  
Chocolate and charcoal.  
The home she never knew she wanted.  
He tastes like everything she's needed.  
As careful as she is, she can’t help touching his face, her fingers itching to feel him.  
He kisses her like he wants to inhale her. Like she’s all he’s ever wanted.  
His fingers are tight where they hold her like he never wants to let go.  
Like he doesn’t care who’s watching.  
Neither does she.

When they break for air, he smiles.  
She’s never seen him smile before.  
It’s like the sun coming out from behind the thunderclouds, brightening everything it touches.  
Warming her.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time,” he confesses, “I’m not sure I can stop.”  
His fingers drift down her face, like he's testing to see if she's real.  
“Then don’t.”  
Quickly, she takes his hand and pulls him up with her.  
Then, they’re walking. Out the subway car, out from underground, out onto the street.  
Out into the open.  
His hand in hers, hers wrapped around his. She leads, he follows.

Her smile matches his.

…

He can’t stop; neither can she.  
Skin on skin, breath on breath, inside and out, they connect.  
Sweaty and slick, they slide against each other, with, within, together, together.  
Her, under his weight, her legs around his, her breath, her... her... hers…  
He is hers.  
As she is his.  
Together, together, it feels like for ever.

He is no longer just a son of the dark, she is no longer just a bearer of the light.  
Intertwined, connected, secured, balanced.  
Together, together, for now, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Big Love to
> 
> [littlemistake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlemistake/pseuds/Littlemistake) and Trish for the alpha and beta help with this! 
> 
> And thank you leoba for the lovely moodboard you made! It's tagged at the end of the story 💙


End file.
